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FIRST, let me say this is not an attack on Shareasale post. Please do not use this thread to air grievances, other complaints, etc about Shareasale. I ask mods to move/remove any off-topic posts if they arise. I think Shareasale does a lot of great things. I think Brian is a fairly competent guy. Met him once in Miami many years ago, he's a good guy.

Whoever manages the website, however, I hope they don't read here (this). The website has always been abysmal. Even by 2000 standards, it is far beyond lacking. The offerings are abundant, but the site design is subpar at best. I still use the old (v5?) version because the latest one is just, just bad. (thanks for the option to revert when I delete site cookies, etc and get presented with the new layout).

The site design is NOT really the issue. The fact that I can't access it through my phone is. I CAN access it, but I can only access the desktop version of the site -- which even on a desktop leaves a lot to be desired. It's 2015. I'm one of the biggest holdouts on everything -- I stopped using tables for site design years after CSS design became a thing. But even most of my sites are now responsive/mobile (the ones that matter). And I held out on that for a while too (they may not be 100% pretty on every device, but they work on every device).

And the thing is, other than the over-abundance of 'menu' options, the site is not that complicated to make responsive (although that annoying basket thing, which is annoying on desktop, will not work on mobile for sure). And some things may have to be excluded for non-desktop. But the things I couldn't access on a mobile device are mostly the things I'd need/want a non-mobile device for anyway (datafeeds, etc). But even basic stat checking would be a plus.

Anyway, I know this came off kind of a-hole-ish. I never seem to complain nicely. But still. The sentiment is the same either way.

(when I say desktop, I include laptops; anything non-tablet/smartphone)

Honestly, I can live with a old style UI as long as I can get the job done. How big is your phone? I went for a phablet (Iphone 6 Plus) specifically because I wanted the full version of websites (more functionality). What's important to me is the internal workings of the site. I'm particularly sensitive to how long merchants can stay offline and the affect this has on all of us... If I had limited engineering resources, I would focus on doing things that would make us all more money. Dead link clicks and stale datafeeds are huge for me.

Commission Junction thought they needed to redesign their UI, that turned out horribly. Definitely a "be careful what you ask for" thing...

Now, truth be told, when I'm working on the road, I check stats through a API based stats app that runs on one of my servers. I remote desktop into the server, run the stats and look at the spreadsheets that are output. This is another reason for having a really huge smart phone. I'm using an app called "Jump" to remote desktop, which is incredibly awesome. I moved all of my day to day functionality onto a server a few years ago. It was incredibly important when taking long vacations.

Merchants, any data you provide to Google Shopping should also be in your affiliate network datafeed. More data means more sales!

Commission Junction thought they needed to redesign their UI, that turned out horribly. Definitely a "be careful what you ask for" thing...

Exactly.

SAS has a very easy to use system for getting whatever type of links you need and in seeing detailed merchant info (including stats that most other networks do not provide) before applying and I'd hate to see that jeopardized by any site re-do.

CJ is exactly the example I would have mentioned. They replaced a "90s" site that was fast and functional with something that looked pretty and modern but wasn't functional. LinkShare did the same thing. Give me functional any day.

If it doesn't provide a mobile version, though, I would agree that is something they should plan out and develop. Depending on how they built the desktop version, that may be a monumental task. I know my main sites were all developed before CSS, so they would take a monumental effort to redesign.

LOL - I had actually griped about CJ and Linkshare in my original response. But it was getting lengthy and I thought not really relevant to the thread. They do make an excellent example - of what NOT to do. Had another listed, too, but they are also IRrelevant (for me, anyway).

I really don't care if the UI looks 90s or year 2048 as long as it gets the job done. As others have mentioned above using new CJ UI as a bad example of fancy and modern design but completely ignore functionality. I'd rather networks spend more resource on taking care of tracking issues, payment issues, offline merchants...Last thing we should encourage network to do is the "re-design" a perfectly functioning interface. SAS UI works just fine.

1. You should definitely use the new interface as opposed to the older one, we do not update the old version with any kind of new reporting, statistics etc... and when we migrate again at some point I doubt we will keep that around. The updated version is far easier to use if you give it a chance - if there are any specific issues that you have with it I'd be happy to address them as well.

I agree with you on a lot of points as well, we are in the middle of re-design/re-org which will improve a lot of the things you talked about so hopefully we improve in your eyes as well when we put it up.